Peter Hume,

Whether or not one sees exploitation in the globalised free market often depends on one's perspective.

Below is a link dealing with Indian children labouring in hazardous conditions to make party balloons for western children - it is a perfect example of exploitation carried out at the behest of unchecked globalised free trade.

http://www.causecast.org/news_items/9346-indian-child-labor-responsible-for-american-kids-birthday-bashes

I give up debating Grok because
a) his entire approach consists of presuming to know better than everyone else without showing reason or evidence, as if he reclines on a couch of ineffable wisdom
b) he has not given any justification of socialism whatsoever
c) he has not refuted the argument that socialism is incapable of economic calculation and must necessarily result in planned economic chaos and despotism
d) his argument essentially consists of calling anything he doesn’t like ‘bourgeois’ and smugly assuming that that settles all questions in his favour.

My argument is with those who reject Marxism but still hope for governmental intervention to mollify the alleged harshness of private ownership of the means of production.

For example, david f rejects Marxism but apparently still reserves the possibility that socialism could be good. Gilbert rejects Marxism but still hopes that government interventions could provide “balance” and harmonise conflicting interests. Poirot accuses child labour.

My argument is that the same defects of the State which prevent it from realizing the hopes of the Marxists, also make it instrinsically unable to realize the hopes of the interventionists.

Both the Marxists and the interventionists have in common that they want to achieve a better society by means of forced redistributions of property, and infringements of individual liberty. The interventionists share the Marxist view that capital and that employment are intrinsically exploitative, and that government should try for fairness’ sake to control supply, demand, prices, profits, or losses.

Although the interventionists explicitly disown Marxism, in fact their assumptions are informed by the same Marxian and socialist ideas which have thoroughly permeated the humanities.

However socialist theory continues to founder and crumble whenever it runs into the rocks of sound economics which disproves all its assumptions.

That is why the interventionists, like the Marxists, can never explain:
• *how* government is going to bring about these hoped-for net benefits, and
• *how* anyone knows that any given policy action is beneficial to society as a whole, rather than causing negative consequences, both ethical and economic, worse than the original problem.

So… how?

Appeal to collectives, classes, -isms, averages, aggregates, and abstract concepts like “competition” and “co-operation” won’t cut the mustard. There is always still a need to show how policy will not result in injustice in the individual case. If you can’t do that, you are in no better position than the full-on Marxists.

The interventionists repeat the same errors of
• Hegel (individual as nothing compared to wondrous all-knowing, all-good super-being the State) and
• Ricardo (fallacy of conceiving value in vast collective monolithic lumps like “labour” and “capital”.)

All economic phenomena originate in individual action and all value, both ethical and economic, must be understood in such terms before there can be any hope of a greater advance.

Poirot
All the relevant States already have child labour laws. So obviously a presumption of State beneficence is not viable.

If the outcomes for the parties to a transaction are better than they otherwise would be, it’s mutually beneficial, not “exploitation”.

The fact that doctors sell medical services, or shops sell drinks, does not make them responsible for disease or thirst respectively. Capitalism is a way of rationalising natural scarcity. It is not itself to blame for the original scarcity any more than any alternative system is – on the contrary, it has done more than any system to reduce it.

What makes you think the workers or their parents want what’s worse for them? Why do you believe the outcome for child workers would be better in the absence of this subsistence? You and Sarah Nelson are always free to send them extra money that you think they should have. Their poverty is no more the fault or responsibility of the employers or consumers than it is yours. On the contrary, the employers and consumers are doing more than anyone to alleviate it. Real moral concern proceeds voluntarily, not by force.

In any event, the idea that enough forceful orders can provide for a more equitable or productive distribution is baseless; it never takes account of the greater ethical and economic deficits that the intervention itself *always necessarily* causes.

Peter Hume:

[Deleted for abuse.]I mean, how many ways are there to back out of a losing argument anyway, pretending the exact opposite..? I think they've already ALL been tried: and this is just a recap of some or one of them.

In any case: marxism remains safe and sound as THE ideology (and praxis) of our day; and is still the de facto horizon of human thought and understanding -- until the next stage of human society takes shape: and its people can live free of the mental and material fetters of bourgeois society... and such debased and even depraved spirits have ceased to exist anywhere on the planet.

Hoorah hooray, a happy day.

Next!

I look to results. The Scandinavian states have interventionist governments, a strong social net and high taxes. They also have societies which combine a high degree of personal freedom and a high degree of economic security. From what I can see they are by far the best places to live on the planet.

Grok worships at the shrine of Marxism, and Peter Hume worships at the shrine of corporate capitalism. I won't argue economic theory with either of you. I just point out that the Scandinavian systems conform to neither of your ideologies but are still the best places to live in many respects.

Marxists have not produced one decent society. When something doesn't work the ideologue will follow the same path with more vigour. It will go right next time. Unmoderated corporate capitalism has generated societies with great maldistributions of wealth and has produced great suffering in the less developed world. Grok and Peter Hume seem to me prisoners of their ideologies. Grok argues by calling names derived from the Marxist glossary.

I don't believe that Marx was an evil man, but he prescribed a most evil system. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

[Deleted. Refers to deleted comment above.]

Wow - we are amazed at your perspicacity.

david f
Without answering the economic questions, you are unable to say whether a given condition is because of, or despite, given policy measures.

What makes you think that the desirability of Scandinavia is not because of the degree of individual liberty and private property that they have not yet destroyed, rather than because of the socialist bureaucratic central planning they have?

The USA is the commonest popular example of supposed unmoderated corporate capitalism. Yet government there takes over 60% of the product of the nation and spends all of it on intervening in supply, demand, prices, profits or losses – and all in the name of the public interest, the national interest, social justice, the workers, racial equality, gender equality, the environment etc. etc. etc.

Now remember that the Austrian school argument against these measures is precisely that they will produce the kinds of negative consequences you don’t like about the USA – systemic corruption, privileges and injustices.

While you yourself will not venture an economic explanation, we see exactly what the Austrian school predicts will result, and what the interventionists predict will not result from these interventions. And lo you blame non-existent ‘unmoderated corporate capitalism’! Can you name even one area of corporate activity in the USA that is not regulated by government?

In fact what you are looking at is the system you advocate: a thoroughgoing governmental regulation of every aspect of economic life in the name of social justice; not a system based on individual liberty and private property.

So both in coming (socialist assumptions) and in going (blaming the result on capitalism) your method is the same as that of Grok; the only difference being that his Marxism is first-hand; yours is third- or fourth-hand.

I do not defend corporate capitalism: that is a straw man. The current scene of corporate capitalism and soft fascism is the inevitable result of the policies that you 'progressives' favour –neither full socialism on the one hand, nor a system of individual liberty and private property on the other.